An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Saturday, August 31, 2013

My Latest Rant—Un-Labor Day this Year?

Labor Day is coming up again.For years most Americans have just regarded
it as the book-end holiday to end the summer, a last day to play or
feast with family and friends before returning to the serious business of work
or school.Of course union leaders
who feel slighted at the absence of much attention on the day that was
originally set aside to honor working people and their organizations wail with
indignation at the effective national snub.

But who cares about them anyway, a lot of us think.Their day is done.They are as relevant in the new economy as buggy whips we are told.Their persistence on the edges of society is
barely tolerated, and is increasingly under attack with the approval of a wide
swath of the population.

Maybe we ought to just junk the holiday all together.People take too damned much time off work anyway.

But if that is too unpopular to fly with middle class folks
who treasure their long weekend, maybe it should be made as optional as Columbus
Day or Martin Luther King Day.Come to think of it, it already is for the increasing numbers of people
employed in the retail, hospitality, and service industries who are expected to
show up any day they are penciled in to a weekly work schedule.Those folks ought to be glad they have a
job.Millions don’t and don’t have any
real prospect of getting one.

Why don’t we acknowledge that and proclaim Un-Labor Day,
a recognition of those now structurally unemployed, the ones who a few
years ago had steady jobs and bright prospects—and mortgages, car payments,
student loans, and credit card debt based on the assumption that their good
fortune was permanent.For millions it
wasn't.Unlike in previous panics,
depressions, or recessions, there is no prospect that they will
ever be recalled to their old jobs or find comparable ones.

Their former employers have permanently downsized,
“making do with less” it is called—with remaining employees are doing the work
or four or five thus demonstrating improved productivity. They have been
replaced by the cyber revolution justas surely as two centuries
ago home weavers were made redundant by power looms tended by child
hands.Some whole industries, like print
publishing, are vanishing before our eyes.Finally if nothing else cuts costs and boost the profit margin, as many
jobs as possible are simply shipped off shore, both traditional production and
service.

Who else? Well, how about the young folks getting out of
school.A high school diploma, we are told is worthless.But now so may be a bachelor’s degree, especially if the benighted student had the poor
judgment to pursue the Liberal Arts or some other degree that is not
basically a technical mastery certificate in some narrow field that itself may
be obsolete in ten years.Borrow money
to make your dreams come true, they were told.They enter the job market with bleak prospects and enormous debt—and
those securing new loans will find that their interest rates greatly increase
thanks to a supposed Congressional compromise
saved them being doubled.Student loan rates were already much higher
than any other lending.So let’s include
the boys and girls who will be in their parent’s basements indefinitely and who
may—or may not—find a job waiting tables or in an airless call center.

How about those who have exited the job market under the
quaint notion that they should be able to retire. Social Security is for leeches, we are
told, who are stealing from their own grandchildren.Pensionsare a ponzi scheme
which have already been stripped from most private employees.Government workers, even less popular,
are categorized as union thugs when they resist giving up theirs.We are supposed to be responsible for our own
retirement savings. Except that for many there isn’t a dime left after
day-to-day expenses to put into that tax advantaged IRA.Those who can are expected to work until
they drop.Those who can’t, well, what
of them.

And then there are those who were always left out:the disabled,
the homeless, the prisoners—and boy do we have prisoners
in this country like nobody's business, the highest incarceration rate in the
world and apparently proud of it—the welfare queens and their unwanted
broods.The rest of us are resentful of
“carrying their load” and cheer when politicians shred the despised “safety” nets that once kept their
noses just above the surface as they tread water. Now it’s sink or swim.Maybe better sink and be done with it.

Most of the rest of us exhaust ourselves trying to stay out of
one of these traps.

And finally are there are those who never really work at at
all but are the lauded wealth creators to whom the rest of us owe
dueobsequiousness.Yes them.They’re the ones!

So let’s loft a cold one and throw a burger on the grill for
the true heroes of our new Un-labor Day!

2 comments:

Great article. This is neither understood nor remembered by today's working class. One thing however is missing. Even though it existed as a holiday prior to 1886 it really was Haymarket that caused it to be such a national holiday. Workers here and around the world were celebrating May Day in commemoration on the Haymarket martyrs. This was becoming a major problem for capitalists and their minions in government. It became a national holiday to mark not labor but the end of summer in 1909 in order to co-opt the genuine sentiment of the workers.